Posts tagged "Guides"

Command + R (Mac) | Control + R (Win) quickly displays rulers along the top and left sides of a document.

To quickly change the ruler’s unit of measurement, Control -click (Mac) | Right Mouse -click (Win) within the ruler area to select from the context sensitive menu.

To display the Units & Rulers preferences, double click in the ruler area.

To change the Ruler’s point of origin (the zero point of the rulers), click and drag the box in the upper left corner of the rulers (where they meet) and reposition. Double clicking at the intersection of the rulers resets the point of origin to the upper left corner of the open document.

In order to quickly find the center of an image, set the rulers to percentage and drag out guides to the 50% marks. You can also use View > New guide but I find dragging faster.

Working with Grids

Command + ‘ (Mac) | Control + ‘ (Win) toggles visibility of the grid.

To create a grid that displays the “Rule of Thirds” overlay, choose Preferences > Guides, Grid & Slices. Set the “Gridline every:” to 100% and the “Subdivisions” to 3.

Working with Guides

To place a single guide at a specific location in a documents, choose View > New Guide. To enter a value that is different than the current units of measurement, type the value and then the unit (px, in, cm, mm, pt, pica, %).

To add a guide using the rulers, click in the ruler area, and drag the guide into the document. Option -drag (Mac) | Alt -drag (Win) from the ruler to toggle the orientation of the guide (vertical to horizontal).

To add multiple guides at one time, choose View > New Guide Layout. Not only can you enter the number of Columns and Rows that you need, but you can also choose the Width or Height, Gutter, Margins and whether or not to Center the Columns. To reuse the guides in multiple images, save the guide options as a preset using the drop-down menu. Here are some examples of the guides you can create:

Specific Columns Width and Rows with Gutter defined.

Guide Margin defined.

Centered Columns with numeric Width defined.

To create a guides based on a shape, choose View > New Guide From Shape. And you’re not limited to only shape layers, you can create Guides from Type layers and pixel based layers! As you can see from the examples below, the Guides are created based on the bounding box around the contents of the layer.

Guides created around Shape Layer.

Guides created around the contents of pixel layer.

Guides created from a Type Layer.

To reposition a guide using the Move tool, position the Move tool directly on top of the guide. When the icon changes to a double headed arrow, click and drag to reposition the guide.

Shift-drag a guide to snap it to the ruler tic marks. Note, this shortcut works even when “snap to” is off (View / Snap To…).

Guides (and paths) can be difficult to see on high resolution monitors because they are anti-aliased. To make them appear thicker, select Preferences > Performance. In the Graphics Processor Settings, click Advanced Settings and uncheck Anti-alias Guides and Paths. Note: you won’t see the change until you click OK in both the Advanced Graphics Processor Settings and close the Preferences.

Changing the Color of Guides, Grids, and Slices

To change the color of the guides (including Smart Guides), grid, and/or slices, select Preferences > Guides, Grid & Slices and either select a color from the drop-down list, or, click in the color swatch to the right and choose any color you would like.

To change the visual representation of the guides or grid, use the pull-down menu to choose line, dash, or dotted (Grid only).

Smart Guides

Smart Guides can be tremendously helpful for aligning and determining distances between multiple layers as they are being repositioned within a document. Check out the video below to learn how.

Pixel Grid

If you Zoom into an image above 500%, a Pixel Grid is displayed on top of the image. This can be especially helpful when trying to align shapes such as rectangles so that they begin and end on a full pixel (to avoid anti-aliased edges). However, to toggle this off, you can uncheck Pixel View under View > Show Pixel Grid.

When changing the Image Size of a document, by default Guides are also resized proportionally. If you do not want the guides to be resized, be sure to lock them using View > Lock Guides before resizing the document using Image > Image Size.

The ability to quickly add multiple guides in Photoshop has arrived! Access this new feature and customize the options by selecting View > New Guide Layout. Not only can you enter the number of Columns and Rows that you need, but you can also choose the Width or Height, Gutter, Margins and whether or not to Center the Columns. To reuse the guides in multiple images, save the New Guide Layout options as a preset using the Preset drop-down menu. You can also choose to Clear Existing Guides if needed. Here are some examples of the guides you can create.

Columns and Rows with Gutters defined.

Specific Columns Width and Rows with Gutter defined.

Guide Margin defined.

Centered Columns with numeric Width defined.

In addition, you can create guides based on a shape (View > New Guide from Shape). And you’re not limited to only Shape layers, you can create Guides from Type layers and pixel based layers! As you can see from the examples below, the Guides are created based on the bounding box around the contents of the layer

Guides created around Shape Layer.

Guides created around the contents of pixel layer.

Guides created from a Type Layer.

These two new features are going to save me a significant amount of time!

When using Guides, I prefer to change from the default Cyan color to something more calming. To do this, select Preferences > Guides, Grid & Slices and either select a color from the drop down list, or, click in the color swatch to the right and choose any color you would like.

In the Lightroom 5 beta, you can choose to display guides in the Library (while in Loupe view), the Develop module and during Tethered Capture by selecting View > Loupe Overlay > Guides. To toggle the display of the overlay, select Guides from the menu (or use Command + Option + O (Mac) | Control + Alt + O (Win).

To reposition the guides, Command (Mac) | Control (Win) -drag the intersection of the guides.

To quickly set guides in the center of any size and/or resolution Photoshop document, set the Preferences for Units & Rulers to Percentage, show your Rulers (Command (Mac) / Control (Win) + R), and record an action dragging guides to the 50% marks. (You can also select View > New Guide to place the guide at the 50% mark instead of dragging it out from the rulers.)

PSCS5 – Command Option (Mac) / Control Alt (Win) + H has always hidden extras such as selection edges, Grid and Guides. Now, when you first use the shortcut, Photoshop will give the option to choose whether to hide extras or hide Photoshop making it easier to choose OS-standard behavior on the Macintosh. In order to define what is an “extra” choose View > Show > Show Extra Options and select from the list.

Place a guide numerically using View / New Guide and Lock using View / Lock Guides or Command + Option (Mac) / Control + Alt (Win) + “;” . And finally, when dragging out a guide from the rulers, Option (Mac) / Alt (Win) toggles the orientation of the guide (vertical to horizontal).

To change the image size of a document and have the guides in the image resize proportionally, be sure to unlock them by unchecking the View > Lock Guides menu item. If you need them to stay in place, then lock the guides before resizing.

To reposition a guide using the Move tool, position the Move tool directly on top of the guide. When the icon changes to a double headed arrow, click and drag to reposition the guide. Drag a guide outside of the image area to quickly delete it. Shift-drag a guide to snap it to the ruler tic marks even is the “snap to” option is turned off (View / Snap To…).

To quickly display rulers at the top and left of an image, click the View Extras icon in the new Application Bar in Photoshop CS4 and select Show Rulers from the drop down menu, or use the keyboard shortcut, Command (Mac) / Control (Win) + R to toggle the rulers visibility. Command (Mac) / Control (Win) + “;” toggles the visibility of guides and Command (Mac) / Control (Win) + ‘ toggles visibility of grids.